


After the Rain

by athena_crikey



Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-04
Updated: 2012-09-04
Packaged: 2017-11-13 12:26:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athena_crikey/pseuds/athena_crikey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coming back from the dead isn't easy. (Post Alabasta arc)</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Rain

The graveyard, ironically, is the lushest part of Alubarna.

Even Alubarna, gifted with the King’s Miracle, cannot sustain grass. Cannot grow anything except the hardiest trees and vegetables, adapted over centuries to the desert’s harsh climate. The one exception is the city’s graveyard, cradled against the western wall where it receives shelter from the fierce eastern winds and a tiny taste of the Sandora’s moisture.

Chaka, however, attributes the verdant garden to a less scientific source: the bones that lie beneath its surface. To the centuries of guardian spirits buried deep in the earth, making this land more holy than most temples. Citizens of Alabasta are returned to their gods in fire, and the pharaohs are laid to sleep in stone crypts beneath the city. But those who gave their lives to the country out of choice rather than blood rest here in a green haven they never knew in life.

His partner never will.

There is a marker for him, carved with his name and the sacred symbols that adorn the graves of every falcon to be buried in the graveyard since it was founded millennia ago. There are no bones beneath it; the grave is hollow, the gift of peace and plenty withheld.

The denial makes Chaka’s own bones itch.

The country has laid its dead to rest. Did so last night, huge pyres lighting the sapphire sky for miles, air thick with incense and sweet oils and tears. He stood beside the king and princess, one half of a broken whole, and mourned for those who burned.

He can’t seem to mourn for his partner, for the man who should have knelt beside him to pray that their gods show mercy to the hundreds they were receiving. He doesn’t know why.

Chaka stands at the grave every night all the same, eyes closed, and catches the scents on the cool breeze. Tonight there is the light tickle of the flowers left by His Majesty, already wilting, the green smell of grass and below it the base smell of still-damp earth. And overtop of it all, the ever-present scent of sand, blowing in on the desert wind.

He is so deep in his thoughts, banked anger still heating him strong as a red-hot kiln, that he doesn’t hear the footsteps.

“That shouldn’t be there,” says a soft voice, puzzled. It comes out of nowhere, startling Chaka out of his concentration. His eyes snap open.

Not many people visit the graveyard; unusual, enviable as the carpet of grass is, it’s a holy place. Those without business stay away.

None of those who have business would be stupid enough to interrupt him here, now.

He turns, bristling beneath his skin and fighting not to show it, fingers twitching to fist.

Standing beside him staring at the grave, so white in the light of the full moon he’s almost shining, is Pell.

Is, his brain re-writes an instant later, someone who looks like Pell. And by then his hand is drawing his sword, teeth lengthening as white-hot fury pours through him like molten glass as he stares at the man before him pretending to be someone he isn’t, someone who is gone, someone who will never rest in peace, and how dare he –

He has a crutch, Chaka notices only as the man whips it up to block the sword-strike; the wood splinters under the hair-splitting sharpness of the blade, shaft splintering apart. The impact stops Chaka long enough for the imposter to catch the sword under his arm – stupid – and strike forward in a snake-fast to grab the hilt in a firm grip, keeping Chaka from twisting it to cut into his side.

“It’s me,” he says, eyes narrow beneath the headscarf, but surprised all the same. “Chaka, it’s me.” Orange irises a thin gold band around black pupils, shallow nose casting a violet shadow on white skin, familiar voice soft and certain.

“You’re dead, you bastard,” spits Chaka, torn between ripping his sword back and dropping it. It’s not an imposter. But it can’t be Pell.

For a long minute, neither of them move.

“No, I’m not,” says Pell, softly. On the grave, the flowers are swaying in the cold breeze. The breeze that sets Pell’s robes swaying, headscarf brushing against his jaw, and sweeps his scent to Chaka. It’s wrong, but also right. So bare, so empty, but him, none the less.

Chaka drops the sword; it hangs for a second at Pell’s fingertips and then drops, landing almost silently in the thick grass. Chaka is already moving, both arms snapping out to snatch the headscarf off. He tosses it away carelessly and fists his hands in the slicked-back chestnut hair, fingers tangling in the thick locks with ease, and pulls.

Pell flinches away, arms coming up to try to pry the hands out of his hair, cursing. “Godsdammit, Chaka, that – fuck – arrgh –” he wavers backwards, face tight and jaw locked with pain, tears welling in his eyes. Chaka twists his fingers and they overflow, running down alongside his nose parallel to the black tattoos.

Chaka lets go of his hair, Pell still cursing at him with his eyes now tightly closed, drops his hands down to grab the man’s shoulders, and buries his nose against Pell’s neck.

Although nowhere near as precise as it is in his jackal form, Chaka’s nose is still more accurate than any other human he’s met. Like every single thing in Alabasta, Pell smells of the desert. Of sand and dust and dryness. Beneath that, he has only one single scent. Himself, the scent that comes from his blood and sweat and skin, the oils in his hair and the chemicals in his pores. None of the everyday scents that make individuals so different: incense, laundry soap, food, furniture. The trappings of life, the silent, invisible habits that sink into the skin.

It is nevertheless without a doubt the unique, live, real scent of his partner.

Chaka lets him go and Pell stumbles back, more to catch his balance than push away. He stares at Chaka half-wary, half-amused, and with fists half-raised.

“Am I going to have to punch you?”

“Dead men don’t cry,” says Chaka, speaking his mind without quite realising what he’s said.

“...And they don’t smell, either?”

He doesn’t understand the words, doesn’t even hear them, because he’s just run his own back through his head. Dead men don’t cry.

Throat so tight he can hardly breathe, Chaka surges forward and pulls Pell into a tight hug, until he really and truly can’t breathe and is inexpressibly, irrepressibly, crushingly glad of it.

It takes Pell pounding on his back to make him let go. Chaka is still trying to make sense of it.

He isn’t dead. Chaka can’t seem to get the echo out of his head, to break out of the reverberations. “You’re not dead.”

“I know,” grits Pell, staggering slightly. Thinking is pushed back as instincts take over, the soldier’s keen eye prompting his evaluation. Chaka’s eyes flit to the remains of the crutch, and he reassesses his partner’s stance and movements. Stiff. Pained.

“You’re injured.”

“It was a harsh war.”

“You were blown up. By a bomb with a blast radius of three kilometres.”

Even as he says it, Chaka’s mouth dries. Inside, his gut is freezing in cracking lines, like a pool of water in a cold desert night. This isn’t possible. Pell can’t be here. Can’t be alive. Surviving that blast wasn’t luck, wasn’t something to be wished for or hoped for or held and cherished as a secret belief. It was impossible.

“You’ve driven me crazy,” says Chaka, with something like wonder. And then, “You bastard.”

Pell gives him an awkward, sad smile. “You don’t love me that much. You’re not crazy. I’m not dead.”

Chaka hardens, hot glass cooling towards shattering-point. “There’s no way you can be alive. Even if you could have flown a kilometre and a half in thirty seconds – and even you’re not that fast on the ascent, definitely not carrying that kind of weight – there’s no way you got high enough to drop it safely and give yourself distance to survive. No way you flew more than three kilometres in thirty seconds.”

“I never realised you were so good at math.”

“I learned,” snarls Chaka. He sat down with a pencil and paper and worked it out two days ago, with Vivi-sama’s testimony for time and distance and his own knowledge of his partner’s abilities and limits. And even then, he hadn’t been able to – he sets his teeth and growls onwards, “So don’t you dare come here and tell me you’re real, tell me you survived, you miraculously flew out of the blast circle and spent a few days recuperating in the desert and you’re back, good as new. Don’t you dare come here and say you’re back to stay, as if nothing happened, as if everything’s fine. Don’t you dare come here and pretend you’re alive!” He’s shouting in Pell’s face, throwing the words at the man like knives, like shards of brittle glass, like broken steel and shattered bone, shaking the man by the collar until he sees them land.

Don’t you dare say I didn’t care enough.

What little colour there is in Pell’s face bleeds out. His pupils are so diluted that his eyes appear black, all traces of predatory orange gone. And then without warning he’s on his knees with one hand braced against the ground and the other pressed tight to his chest, head low, breathing ragged.

Chaka’s heart skips a beat, trips and catches itself so hard it hurts, pounding nails into his chest.

“Pell? Pell? Oi!” He’s on his own knees, ground firmer than sand but softer than stone beneath them, grass cool against his legs even through the thick fabric of his robes. Pell’s shoulders are shaking with the effort of his breaths, steadying slowly. He looks up, and now there is orange, glinting in the moonlight beneath shadowing brows.

“Thought you didn’t believe,” he says gruffly. And then, more calmly, face softening, “I never said I survived.”

Chaka freezes. Just stops cold, turning to ice. One of them is crazy, one of them is dead, one of them isn’t here. He’s not even sure which is which anymore; dead men don't cry, and he has no tears. None of this can be real. But it feels it.

Pell gives him an unforgiving stare, all predatory orange and moonlight. “Don’t look like that. You of all people should believe. We are avatars of the protecting gods. They love Alabasta more than any of us, we all believe that, believe it with all our hearts. Do you think they could see what Crocodile did to this land, to our people, and let him win at every turn? Do you think they could let their people lose to him? Do you think they could lose us to him?”

“You’re saying they brought you back to spit in Crocodile’s eye?” Chaka doesn’t finger the scars on his chest, doesn’t even glance at them. At the wounds that should have killed him, that he not only survived but recovered from in two days.

Pell shrugs, more a dip of the head than anything else, and Chaka can see the pain there now. “Maybe. Maybe they have work for me. Maybe they wanted to reward us. Maybe they just didn’t want to deal with another soul at the moment. It’s not my place to ask. You said it would be impossible to survive that blast. You’re right. It was. It was…” Pell closes his eyes, jaw tense. “It wasn’t survivable. I woke up in the desert. Out of sight of the city. Nothing there but the sand and the wind, and old Turin’s medical clinic a stone’s throw away. Does that sound like coincidence to you?”

“It sounds impossible.”

Pell straightens, face hard. “I’m here. I have faith. I always have. Where is yours, jackal?”

Chaka stares back, and speaks with a catch in his throat. “Here, strong as ever. Just bitter, knowing that our gods weren’t strong enough to save this land. To save her people.” To save you.

They were all so proud of Vivi-sama, and so grateful to her friends. There wasn’t a soul in Alabasta who would hear a word against them. But under that was the sour, sick knowledge: We never had a chance. We didn’t need more training, more practice. We simply could never have been good enough. And we were saved by a group of children.

Men who had devoted their whole lives to gain the strength to protect their country, who stood in the images of their gods to protect everything they had. And Crocodile had laughed at their opposition.

For the first time in three years of drought, only after the rains came, had he doubted. Had he truly begun to believe the claims of the rebels: The gods have forsaken us.

But they didn’t; they hadn’t. The proof is right here in front of him. Not a gift, not an apology. The protection of a man under the wings of the gods, a man who had made the ultimate sacrifice in their name, maybe. Or maybe, as Pell had said, a statement. We will not be defeated.

He closes his eyes, the sudden rush of his shame hot and uncomfortable under his skin. Gods forgive me. Forgive my anger. Forgive my grief for a proud death.

Forgive my doubt.

There’s a soft rustle of fabric from Pell. “I’m sorry.”

Chaka raises his head, slowly. Pell’s slumped down now, sitting back with his legs half crossed, sternness faded away. Just tired, and slightly chagrined.

Chaka raises an eyebrow. “For dying?”

Pell smiles weakly. “No, not that. But for implying – for accusing you of lack of feeling. I didn’t mean – I know you care.”

Chaka makes to punch him, stops himself in time and rolls his eyes instead. “Oh, shut up. Come on, you should see the doctor. And everyone else.” He stands, picking up his sword as he goes and sheathing it, and holds a hand out to Pell.

“Does this mean you believe in me?”

“I’m considering it. If you’re gone in the morning, I’ll come up there and beat the crap out of you myself.” Chaka waves his hand, eyes narrowing.

Pell’s mouth crooks. “You broke my crutch.” He grabs his headscarf off the ground, then takes the hand all the same, allows himself to be helped to his feet.

“You can have my sword.”

“It’s not long enough.”

“That’s insulting.”

“…Chaka?”

“Yes?”

Pell’s staring up at the palace, eyes focused for distance as he adjusts his headscarf. “About – it might be better if we kept quiet about this all. About – about the survivability odds. Things could get pretty complicated. And for all most people know, it was survivable.”

Chaka nods, mouth set in a grim line. “For once, I am in complete agreement with you.” He sighs, then jogs the man’s harm, allowing a smile to break out. For now, at least, it seems that Pell is back. He still can’t quite believe in anything else, but for the moment it’s real enough to hold on to. “Come on, let’s go.”

Pell leaning heavily on his crooked arm, they start on the way home.


End file.
